NEW YORK, NY.- The International Theater Amsterdam said Wednesday that it had cut ties with Ivo van Hove, the Tony-winning director who led the company for more than 20 years. The breakup was announced just weeks after a report said that a culture of fear had developed under van Hoves leadership and that he allowed bullying to go unchecked.
Although van Hove stepped down as the theaters artistic director last year, he stayed on as a salaried artistic adviser and was scheduled to create new work. A news release this week said that those collaborations had been terminated, and that the theaters entire supervisory board had resigned.
By taking these steps and creating space for restoration and transparency, the interests and feelings of all involved are taken seriously, Clayde Menso, the International Theater Amsterdams managing director, said in a statement.
In July, the International Theater Amsterdam published an independent report that included the results of a survey of 285 current and former employees.
The report detailed incidents of bullying and intimidation, including an actress shouting at a member of the technical staff after an error, and a guest director acting similarly toward actors. Many of the surveys respondents said they did not feel safe at the company.
Last week, the NRC newspaper published its own investigation into the theaters backstage culture. In the article, an actress said a colleague had grabbed her by the throat.
A spokesperson for van Hove said the director was declining all interview requests. In a brief written statement, van Hove said the decision to leave the theater was reached by mutual agreement.
Van Hove took over the theater in 2001 when it was known as the Toneelgroep. He turned it into one of Europes great theaters and toured its productions internationally, including to New York. In 2022, the theaters adaptation of A Little Life played to rave reviews at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Van Hoves own profile long outstripped the companys. In 2016, he won a Tony Award for directing Arthur Millers A View From the Bridge, and he was a nominee in 2019 for Network starring Bryan Cranston.
But some of van Hoves recent shows did not live up to that earlier success. In February 2020, his revival of West Side Story opened to mixed reviews just weeks before the coronavirus pandemic shut down Broadway. (The musical never reopened.) This year, British critics savaged his Opening Night in Londons West End; its run ended more than two months early.
Since stepping down as the International Theater Amsterdams artistic director, van Hove has taken up the leadership of the Ruhrtriennale Festival of the Arts in northern Germany. His first edition began last Friday, with I Want Absolute Beauty, in which actor Sandra Hüller performs songs by P.J. Harvey.
Accounts of problems in the theater began emerging last year, when Hélène Devos, an actress in the ensemble, wrote on Instagram that she was leaving the company because she had witnessed and endured severe mental and physical abuse. When she complained, Devos said, she was aggressively pushed back.
Devos did not respond to an interview request.
Hein Janssen, a longtime theater critic for de Volkskrant newspaper, said van Hoves international success had played a part in the scandal. Because van Hove was working abroad so often, he could not oversee the company properly and appeared happy to let other staff members deal with the incidents, Janssen said. The complaints were ignored, he added.
Janssen said he was shocked to read in the report that star actors in the company had bullied and intimidated younger colleagues. Cutting ties with van Hove would not fix that, he said. He added that Eline Arbo, the theaters current artistic director, should focus on fixing the culture in Amsterdam rather than working abroad.
Marijn Lems, a theater critic at NRC, said that he did not expect the scandal to have an impact on van Hoves international standing. But, he added, it had seriously dented the directors image in the Netherlands.
The major theaters wont want anything to do with him, Lems said.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.